Posted on: Thursday, June 30, 2005

Letters to the Editor

We need team vision to be more than words

This is regarding Gov. Lingle's commentary on Sunday, "Lingle outlines issues at stake in bill to raise taxes for transit."

Wouldn't it be great if the standard speech that goes "I will work together with colleagues, business leaders, community leaders and citizens to create a vision and build a better future for us all" were happening?

What about this: get the best system and builder/contractor; write a contract to incentivize meeting deadlines and keeping to budget; get the federal funding; avoid taking car lanes away; build a system people will use, that can be extended upon in the future.

How about our congressmen, governor, mayor and City Council all making a commitment to doing exactly the above and getting mass transit done right?

Dr. Ed Cadman took giant steps at UH

It is with great sadness that our organization marks the resignation of Dr. Ed Cadman from the post of dean at the John A. Burns School of Medicine. There's no question that without Ed at the helm, the gleaming new medical school campus at Kaka'ako would not be here today.

It has not been an easy task. When he took on the job back in 1999, the medical school was moribund and in very real danger of being dissolved.

Ed, with the assistance of a number of other determined people, went about the task of rebuilding the institution — literally from the ground up.

Understanding that hiring top-flight researchers was the key to bringing in grant money, Ed began the process of hiring some of the best and brightest scientists in the nation. In addition to Mainland hires, many of those targeted are returning kama'aina, eager to come back to the Islands to make a contribution. This process is only beginning.

Ed can take heart that the new Kaka'ako campus has become a powerful symbol of Hawai'i's entry into life sciences. It has proven to be a catalyst that we believe will create a more diversified state economy and, as this newspaper said, will pay dividends in years to come.

We salute Ed and his hard-fought bureaucratic battles to make the Kaka'ako campus a reality. We wish him the best of luck in health and in his new endeavors at the medical school.

However, we who inherit his legacy cannot rest on our laurels. Much needs to be done in ensure that the children of Hawai'i see the full potential of Ed's dream.

Rail system won't solve our problems

Rep. Ryan Yamane, D-37th (Mililani, Waipi'o), said in a recent letter to The Advertiser that "It is time to build a rail system that gets us to where we want to go in a reasonable length of time, and allows us to spend our time in the ways we used to before we sat in traffic for hours every day."

If Rep. Yamane is so concerned about reducing the time taxpayers of this state spend in traffic every day, then why is he advocating rail?

Study after study discounts the notion that building a rail system will have any effect on reducing traffic. So, tell me again please, why are we about to spend billions (with a "B") of dollars on a system that won't reduce traffic one iota?

Thumbing nose at Ezra over lease law mistake

Whether one opposed or supported the mayor's and the City Council's decision to repeal the lease conversion law does not matter; there are differences of opinion. But it did not take a law degree to know that the city would wind up in court because it gave no consideration to those who had already begun the conversion process.

So here we are, the legal process has begun, and Judge David Ezra has made his initial opinions known. In response to those opinions, Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi and a city attorney have thumbed their noses at Judge Ezra with such comments as "that's his opinion" and "it didn't cost much, I'm on city salary," respectively.

Professional, intelligent politicians and attorneys know not to thumb their noses at Judge Ezra or any judge. But no matter, if Judge Ezra rules in favor of the plaintiffs, taxpayers will pay for this stupid folly.

Hellish cartoon not in line with paper's motto

I quote from the paper's mission statement: "The Honolulu Advertiser's mission is ... to be diligent, truthful, accurate and fair ... To perpetuate the qualities of aloha — tolerance, humility, sharing and respect."

Looking at Dick Adair's June 23 political "cartoon" of former Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris digging in hell, I cannot help but wonder where a depiction of this sort fits into The Advertiser's mission statement. Mayor Harris served this city well, making considerable improvements to protect and advance our economy.

I don't care what your politics may or may not be — portraying this man in hell while conversing with the devil is neither diligent, truthful, accurate nor fair. It does not perpetuate any quality of aloha, most particularly that of respect.

There is absolutely no excuse for such editorial behavior. What were you thinking?

Honolulu should follow China's lead

After reading Mr. William Kinaka's letter ("Nice facilities: China star-rates its toilets; so should we," June 18), I would like to add my two cents.

While on a trip to Zhongshan, China, I stopped by a shopping mall to use the restroom. While I was leaving, I ran into the janitor and complimented him on how clean the restroom was.

He smiled and replied, "I clean the restrooms three times a day. First at 10 a.m., then at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, third time at 10 p.m. at night during closing time."

What about our city?

News lite creeping in to PBS programming

So Mike McCartney thinks that the local PBS offering is balanced.

Just last Friday night I noted that the thoughtful Wall Street Journal report will be replaced by a local interview show that features the PBN columnist who seems to specialize in humor-laced comments similar to the more acerbic Dan Boylan whose bias has long been evident on PBS local.

Guess Mr. McCartney believes we need more news lite in our "balanced diet."

Commuters from country want dedicated bus service

The prospect of the largest tax increase in city history looms. It has focused people's minds on public transportation in this town.

The mayor and the City Council seem to have made up their minds that a rail system is the only solution to our traffic problems, never mind that it is also the most expensive. For the life of me, I can't understand why they are so unwilling to try to improve TheBus.

When a commuter is asked why he or she drives a car rather than uses TheBus, the most frequent answer is the bus takes too long. It is true that, even with the traffic problems, the auto is the quickest means of getting around. There is little hustle and bustle in my life as I am retired, so I use the bus frequently. When I ride, I observe what is going on around me and I also talk to many commuters who drive, including my wife. Here are some of my observations.

When one boards a bus that shows a destination of Makaha, 'Ewa Beach, Wahiawa, Hawai'i Kai or Circle Isle, one should have the expectation that is where the bus is going and that it will take a more or less direct route. This is not the case. All of these buses stop at every corner all the way through town. Every corner on Kapi'olani, Beretania, Dillingham, Nimitz and on and on.

Now the commuters in their cars are coming from far out in the countryside and do not want to stop at all those corners. They want to get to work in the morning and home at night quickly. They work in downtown and Waikiki. If the bus were to stop only at major transfer points, the speed of the service would increase dramatically. Local buses could serve the rest of the stops passed by the buses on the longer routes.

A dedicated bus lane would further improve the speed of the commute and still be hundreds of times less costly than a rail system.

Those are the carrots in a carrot-and-stick approach. The stick could be making a gas tax increase of 50 cents per gallon since the principal beneficiary of any reduction in the number of cars along the highway would be those who are drivers themselves. This approach would be preferable to penalizing people like myself who already use public transportation with an increase in the excise tax.

Every possible remedy should be considered before passing the largest tax increase in the city's history.

It's time we cleaned up our act

Please picture this of Hawai'i:

• A society with an educational system that produces a population with one-fifth of its citizens functionally illiterate.

• The highest per-capita use of methamphetamine in its nation (with the concomitant mob connections and murders).

• A Legislature bitterly partisan and generally fat-headed.

• A rapidly deteriorating infrastructure (roads, sewers, water, power-grid system, emergency response, etc.).

• A judiciary that routinely releases dangerous criminals for lack of prison space.

• Public unions holding the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the heads of the population.

Add to this an indigenous people who question their roles in determining the destiny of their own lives.

This might sound like Brazil, Colombia or post-Soviet Russia, but it is not.

It is Hawai'i nei.

I am sad to say, but our beautiful Islands are sorrowfully overdue for implosion by neglect; but the good news is that we can stop this downward spiral.

As Hawai'i citizens, we need to seize the initiative by no longer tolerating second-rate politicians whose only measure of success is re-election, toss out entrenched and obstructive bureaucrats who are wounding all of us with a "thousand small paper cuts," and allow our society to return to one that cherishes its uniqueness and environment and culture.

A society that applauds intellectual achievement, seeks out and rewards those who, through perseverance and integrity, strive to better their communities and themselves.

A society of individuals with respect for their neighbors and 'ohana. A people who will not tolerate the tawdry or mediocre.

Our 'ohana. That's it in a nutshell, not some optimist's pipe-dream, but a laudable goal.

This is our 'aina, and we cannot allow it to be pillaged by privileged interests and those who would fill their rice bowls at kama'aina expense.

The solution is to be proactive and engaged in the present and future of our state. We can no longer afford incompetence because otherwise we would truly become an irrelevant Third World joke.

Right now, homelessness, drugs, illiteracy, systemic corruption, dirty cops, a lousy Legislature and so on may seem intractable. Even protecting the land and environment is becoming boring for a lot of folks.

But these are issues and concerns that touch all of our lives. They may not be next door, or in the backyard or down the road, but they might as well be in our own homes. Because our island communities are still that overused word: 'ohana.

And yes, Hawai'i could surely do with some greatness right now from its leaders, but I think we would settle for a healthy dose of honesty and self-examination.

That can't be too much to ask.